Replication Data for: Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How well do people perceive parties' ideological positions? (doi:10.7910/DVN/B26I4N)

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Part 2: Study Description
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Replication Data for: Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How well do people perceive parties' ideological positions?

doi:10.7910/DVN/B26I4N

Harvard Dataverse

2026-02-17

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Çakır, Semih; Oguzhan Alkan; Dassonneville, Ruth; Somer-Topcu, Zeynep, 2026, "Replication Data for: Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How well do people perceive parties' ideological positions?", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/B26I4N, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:am2wtIphUdvUIbNpCxnpwQ== [fileUNF]

Replication Data for: Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How well do people perceive parties' ideological positions?

doi:10.7910/DVN/B26I4N

Çakır, Semih (University of Ottawa)

Oguzhan Alkan (University of Texas at Austin)

Dassonneville, Ruth (KU Leuven)

Somer-Topcu, Zeynep (University of Texas at Austin)

Harvard Dataverse

Çakır, Semih

Çakır, Semih

2026-02-17

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/B26I4N

Social Sciences, perceptual accuracy, ideological positions, party positions

While citizens are sufficiently informed about parties' ideological stances during elections, we know little about how the perceptual accuracy of party positions evolves beyond the election campaign period. We argue that, during election campaigns, when political information is more readily available, citizens perceive party positions more accurately, but this perceptual accuracy decreases outside of election time. Leveraging the as-if random variation in interview timing in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems dataset across 21 established democracies and the panel data structure of the British Election Study Internet Panel, we show that perceptual accuracy declines post-election and increases during the pre-electoral campaign period. Additional analyses suggest that these fluctuations in accuracy are primarily due to individuals becoming less informed rather than updating their perceptions in response to new information. These findings have important implications for democratic representation.

<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0">CC0 1.0</a>

• Number of cases: 318

• No. of variables per record: 4

• Type of File: text/tab-separated-values

UNF:6:am2wtIphUdvUIbNpCxnpwQ==

• country_name_short
• year_election
• daysbetween
• election

f13464074 Location:

Variable Format: character

Notes: UNF:6:lb1pEN5yC7Eh2LdtQlDfNg==

f13464074 Location:

Summary Statistics: Mean 2006.433962264151; StDev 9.237851295283807; Valid 318.0; Min. 1991.0; Max. 2022.0;

Variable Format: numeric

Notes: UNF:6:w/gCVZoy/SucUtACB3KOZA==

f13464074 Location:

Summary Statistics: Max. 541.0; Mean 39.65408805031446; Min. 0.0; StDev 48.21036806448752; Valid 318.0;

Variable Format: numeric

Notes: UNF:6:9D2Wg8BaVO+aQY75j50wFQ==

f13464074 Location:

Variable Format: character

Notes: UNF:6:rizoo2C36VfcaxktJGAydw==

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